17 research outputs found
Role of heat and mechanical treatments in the fabrication of superconducting Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2 ex-situ Powder-In-Tube tapes
Among the recently discovered Fe-based superconducting compounds, the
(K,Ba)Fe2As2 phase is attracting large interest within the scientific community
interested in conductor developments. In fact, after some years of development,
critical current densities Jc of about 105 A/cm2 at fields up to more than 10 T
have been obtained in powder in tube (PIT) processed wires and tapes. Here we
explore the crucial points in the wire/tape fabrication by means of the ex-situ
PIT method. We focus on scaling up processes which are crucial for the
industrial fabrication. We analyzed the effects on the microstructure of the
different heat and mechanical treatments. By an extensive microstructural
analysis correlated with the transport properties we addressed the issues
concerning the phase purity, the internal porosity and crack formation in the
superconducting core region. Our best conductors with a filling factor of about
30 heat treated at 800 C exhibited Tc = 38 K the highest value measured in such
kind of superconducting tape. The microstructure analysis shows clean and well
connected grain boundaries but rather poor density: The measured Jc of about 3
x 10^4 A/cm2 in self-field is suppressed by less than a factor 7 at 7 T. Such
not yet optimized Jc values can be accounted for by the reduced density while
the moderate in-field suppression and a rather high n-factor confirm the high
homogeneity and uniformity of these tapes
Visualizing the microscopic coexistence of spin density wave and superconductivity in underdoped NaFe1-xCoxAs
Although the origin of high temperature superconductivity in the iron
pnictides is still under debate, it is widely believed that magnetic
interactions or fluctuations play an important role in triggering Cooper
pairing. Because of the relevance of magnetism to pairing, the question of
whether long range spin magnetic order can coexist with superconductivity
microscopically has attracted strong interests. The available experimental
methods used to answer this question are either bulk probes or local ones
without control of probing position, thus the answers range from mutual
exclusion to homogeneous coexistence. To definitively answer this question,
here we use scanning tunneling microscopy to investigate the local electronic
structure of an underdoped NaFe1-xCoxAs near the spin density wave (SDW) and
superconducting (SC) phase boundary. Spatially resolved spectroscopy directly
reveal both the SDW and SC gap features at the same atomic location, providing
compelling evidence for the microscopic coexistence of the two phases. The
strengths of the SDW and SC features are shown to anti correlate with each
other, indicating the competition of the two orders. The microscopic
coexistence clearly indicates that Cooper pairing occurs when portions of the
Fermi surface (FS) are already gapped by the SDW order. The regime TC < T <
TSDW thus show a strong resemblance to the pseudogap phase of the cuprates
where growing experimental evidences suggest a FS reconstruction due to certain
density wave order. In this phase of the pnictides, the residual FS has a
favorable topology for magnetically mediated pairing when the ordering moment
of the SDW is small.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure
Magnetism and its microscopic origin in iron-based high-temperature superconductors
High-temperature superconductivity in the iron-based materials emerges from,
or sometimes coexists with, their metallic or insulating parent compound
states. This is surprising since these undoped states display dramatically
different antiferromagnetic (AF) spin arrangements and Nel
temperatures. Although there is general consensus that magnetic interactions
are important for superconductivity, much is still unknown concerning the
microscopic origin of the magnetic states. In this review, progress in this
area is summarized, focusing on recent experimental and theoretical results and
discussing their microscopic implications. It is concluded that the parent
compounds are in a state that is more complex than implied by a simple Fermi
surface nesting scenario, and a dual description including both itinerant and
localized degrees of freedom is needed to properly describe these fascinating
materials.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, Review article, accepted for publication in
Nature Physic
Quantum-well induced giant spin-orbit splitting
We report on the observation of a giant spin-orbit splitting of quantum-well states in the unoccupied electronic structure of a Bi monolayer on Cu(111). Up to now, Rashba-type splittings of this size have been reported exclusively for surface states in a partial band gap. With these quantum-well states we have experimentally identified a second class of states that show a huge spin-orbit splitting. First-principles electronic structure calculations show that the origin of the spin-orbit splitting is due to the perpendicular potential at the surface and interface of the ultrathin Bi film. This finding allows for the direct possibility to tailor spin-orbit splitting by means of thin-film nanofabrication